Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Sen. Collins Introduces Compromise Gun Bill; Triple Amputee Helps Others as a Doctor; GOP's Identity Crisis. Aired 8:30-9 a ET

Aired June 22, 2016 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:30:29] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The terror attack in Orlando dividing Congress over how to fight radical extremism and guns. The Senate failing to pass any of the four gun control bills this week, but now there's a new measure that's getting a new look. Let's bring in Florida Democratic Senator and Orlando resident, Bill Nelson. He is a co-sponsor of the compromise bill being introduced by Maine Senator Susan Collins.

Senator, thanks so much for being here on NEW DAY.

SEN. BILL NELSON (D), FLORIDA: Thank you, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about this new bill and what makes you think this one has a fighting chance when the other four died?

NELSON: Because we have a Republican sponsor. Unfortunately, the votes on Monday broke along partisan lines, but this time a group of political centrists, both parties, have come together. Now the question is - we'll get most of the Democrats for this. The question is, in view of the NRA full-out, full-court press in opposition to it, can they get anywhere from 15 to 20 Republicans to support it.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about -

NELSON: And that's - that's how you get to 60.

CAMEROTA: OK, let's talk about what's in the bill. Is this basically the no fly/no buy theory, that if you're on a terror watch list it prevents you from getting on a plane, you shouldn't be able to get a gun?

NELSON: It's actually very little difference from Dianne Feinstein's bill that was voted down on Monday. Hers on American persons, which is American citizens and those legally here, like green card holders, that would have affect only 5,000 people in the country. Susan Collins' would affect only 2,700 people in the country. So you can see it's very little difference. It's the no-fly list on Susan's, plus the selectee list, and that's 2,700.

CAMEROTA: OK. So the fact that Dianne Feinstein's didn't work, the - the reason that you think that this one stands a chance is just because it's an even more narrow scope and you think that maybe the NRA won't hold sway with some of your colleagues?

NELSON: It's the fact that we've got bipartisan support. There are improvements in Susan's bill as to the appeals process if you mistakenly get on, for example, the selectee list. It makes it easier to get off. That's an improvement. Both those bills, by the way, included my bill, because neither one of them would have caught Mateen. Mine says, if you've been on the watch list in the past, as Mateen had, that then when you buy the gun the FBI is pinged with a notice so they can go talk to that person.

CAMEROTA: Well, given, senator, I mean, how you and I have spoken in the past about how much power you do believe the NRA holds in the halls of Congress there, what do you think's going to happen with this bill?

NELSON: I think it's going to be close. If we get 40 Democrats out of 46, they've got to come up with 20. If we get all 46, all they have to do is come up with 14 Republican senators. Either way, it's going to be close.

CAMEROTA: Senator Chris Murray said on Monday, when those other measures failed, quote, "the Republicans have decided to sell weapons to ISIS." Do you agree with that?

NELSON: Yes. And I'm very proud of Chris and doing that 15-hour filibuster, which I participated in, which 40 members of our caucus participated in because it brought this issue to a head. And we're talking about it, and we're actually going to vote on something again that's got a chance.

CAMEROTA: I mean, of course, the Republicans didn't know that this gunman, nor did the gun shop owner know this gunman had pledged allegiance to ISIS, so is that not a bridge too far, saying the Republicans have decided to sell guns to put - decided to sell weapons to ISIS?

NELSON: But he had been on the terrorist list. And the bill that we're going to vote on, it would catch a person like that because it would ping the FBI.

[08:35:08] Alisyn, I owe this to the people of Orlando. They want action. I had people - when I was down there interviewing with Chris in the heat of summer on South Orange Avenue, I'd have people come up to me just enveloped in tears and grabbed me and hugged me and say, please, senator, do something.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

NELSON: I owe this to them.

CAMEROTA: Senator, I know that since this massacre, you've also spent a great deal of time with fellow Senator Marco Rubio. Do you think that this catastrophe in both of your home state has changed his opinion on whether or not to seek reelection?

NELSON: I don't know. I really don't know. It has gripped the state of Florida. And I specifically reached out to Marco when I found out he was coming to Orlando. I said, Marco, you and I need to stand in front of those cameras together to show that we are united in this crisis. But I don't know what his political calculus is about running for reelection.

CAMEROTA: OK. Senator Bill Nelson, thank you. We will be following very closely what happens in Congress this week. Thanks so much for being on NEW DAY.

NELSON: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Let's get to Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, when we look at the state of play within this presidential election, there is somewhat of an identity issue going within the GOP. Donald Trump has caused this party to reconsider itself. And as a result, there are big divisions. The question now is, what will Trump's affect be on the party down the road, all the elections to come in this cycle? Answers ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:40:47] CAMEROTA: Time now for the five things to know for your new day.

Donald Trump will deliver a speech in New York today targeting Hillary Clinton for what he calls her failed policies and bad judgment.

Clinton, meanwhile, blasting Donald Trump, saying he's unfit to manage the economy and would plunge the U.S. back into recession.

More provocation from North Korea, test firing two more ballistic missiles. One flew almost 250 miles before crashing into the Sea of Japan.

The House Rules Committee blocking an attempt by Tea Party Congressman Steve King to keep Harriet Tubman off the $20 bill. He filed an amendment trying to block Treasury spending for the redesign.

Cleveland is ready to party like it's 1964. Crowds starting to gather for a parade celebrating LeBron James and the NBA champion Cavaliers. It's the city's first pro sports title in 52 years.

For more on the five things to know, you can go to newdaycnn.com for all of the latest.

Chris.

CUOMO: All right, for all the talk about money, there is no need to take up a collection for Donald Trump. His campaign, you know, the low numbers there so far certainly making a lot of hey on late night. Here's your late night laughs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY FALLON, LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW HOST: A new Election Commission reporter just came out saying that the Trump campaign isn't doing so well financially and is practically broke. The report revealed that Donald Trump's campaign started this month with only $1.3 million, which is almost $8 million less than Bernie Sanders' campaign. Even Bernie was like, how does it feel like poor, you loser. You're in the bottom 1 percent, even worse.

STEPHEN COLBERT, LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW HOST: Donald Trump is so broke, he's had to stop feeding his hairpiece. Yes. He sent it to a farm upstate. It will be so much happier up there, chasing rabbits, chasing rabbits.

SETH MEYERS, LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW HOST: In an interview earlier this morning, Donald Trump said that has gotten the worst three weeks of publicity I've ever had in my life. His biggest problem is that he can't get this guy to shut up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: It continues the pace, late night laughs.

CUOMO: It - I think it's getting more funny because what they're doing is - is becoming less and less exaggerated. You know, they're really hueing to what's actually happening in the campaign, which makes it more funny.

CAMEROTA: Endless material.

There are two schools of thought on Donald Trump. Some say he's hurting the Republican Party. Others argue that he is helping them. So which one is it?

CUOMO: But first, while her third grade classmates were having fun, Kellie Lim was in for the fight for her life. Today, the triple amputee is helping others as a doctor. Our doctor, Sanjay Gupta, has today's "Turning Points." What a story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Kellie Lim had to overcome a lot to become a doctor. In fact, she's lucky to be alive.

KELLIE LIM: At eight years of age, I lost both of my legs, my right arm, and a few fingers on my left hand.

GUPTA (on camera): Kellie had bacterial meningitis, and then she went into septic shock. In fact, doctors only gave her a 15 percent chance of surviving at all. The little girl lost circulation to her arms and her legs, forcing surgeons to amputate.

LIM: I was in the hospital for approximately four months. There was a strong family history of grit. So I think that's kind of engrained in me already.

GUPTA (voice-over): Kellie's Chinese immigrant mother went blind in her late teens.

LIM: She became an inspiration. She took care of me, helped me to put on my legs, put on my clothes.

GUPTA: Kellie graduated high school as valedictorian, and finished UCLA Medical School with honors.

LIM: I didn't have any other options other than to use my brain.

GUPTA: Now she's an allergist immunologist at UCLA Medical Center.

LIM: It is very physically tiring to have prosthetic legs.

GUPTA: But determination trumps exhaustion.

LIM: I do have that drive to be better than everyone else because I have to. In my life it's always one step at a time.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:48:29] CUOMO: I'm not feeling the love for your party. Well. Many in the GOP worry that Donald Trump's rhetoric is turning off key constituents and threatening his own White House hopes and down ballot races. That would be the concern. Others believe he's redefining the party and making it stronger than ever. Let's discuss, shall we?

CAMEROTA: Let's do that.

CUOMO: We have CNN political commentator and Trump supporter, Kayleigh McEnany, and CNN commentator and former Bush White House staffer Margaret Hoover.

Let's start with a simple show of hands. Who believes that Trump is dividing the party and in a negative way? Shocking.

CAMEROTA: I expected.

CUOMO: McEnany actually grabbed her hands harder there, just in case there was any instinct to raise.

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I did.

CAMEROTA: She (INAUDIBLE). She locked (ph) them together as a show of unity.

CUOMO: She's going to put them under the table. Why, Hoover? Why do you feel that - we'll put up some numbers to support you, by the way.

MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Oh - oh, really. (INAUDIBLE) to do my work (ph).

CUOMO: Choice for a nominee, because I don't know how much passion you bring into this today. Trump, 51 percent should be the nominee. Someone else, 48 percent. Republican Party is divided. In 2008, half the party said we feel divided when they're trying to figure out then what to do and now it's 87 percent. So what's your case?

HOOVER: Well, this is where the - traditionally in any campaign, the candidate consolidates all of his support and really runs sort of strongly into the convention with the wind in his sails. But what Donald Trump is actually having to do is shore up all the members of the constituency and the conservative and the Republican Party that aren't on his side already. I mean he had a big evangelical confab yesterday to get all the evangelicals on board.

Look, normally that's sewn up in Iowa. That's sewn up in the south. That isn't the case. I mean Donald Trump has to win every vote Mitt Romney won, plus. But right now he's losing water trying to just even get conservatives and self-identified Republican to turn out for him, let alone all of the demographic groups he's turned off.

[08:50:13] CAMEROTA: Kayleigh, what do you say to Republicans like Margaret who believe that he's dividing the party?

MCENANY: Well, I don't think he's dividing Republican voters. In fact, he's uniting Republican voters. It's Republican leadership that's the problem that's not uniting. And I think he is very good for the party.

We look back when Eric Cantor lost the election. No one was even monitoring that election. And someone in Republican leadership lost to a no-name professor named David Brat. At that moment, the GOP should have said, something is going on in this party. We are being rejected. Leadership is being rejected. We saw it in nearly every state, the anger in the electorate towards the GOP was like 70 percent, 60 percent some places, 50 percent, you know, at best. So there's a lot of anger. Donald Trump has captured that and given voice to Republican voters.

CUOMO: So why is it 51/48 in terms of I want Trump or I want someone else within his own party?

MCENANY: Well, the same poll showed that 47 percent, I think it was, prefer Sanders or someone else to Hillary Clinton. So I say that's roughly on par with what's happening on the Democrat side. Another "New York Times" poll showed that a few weeks ago, right after he won the nomination, 80 percent of voters had consolidated around him.

CUOMO: But Clinton has a real challenger in Sanders. You know, I mean he's still there until the convention and Trump's alone. So it's really - it's just Trump or other. And he's most splitting it with other.

MCENANY: But he had 17 other opponents. And it's completely fair that other people prefer another candidate. But in the end, they're going to vote Trump and that is what matters.

CAMEROTA: Margaret, what about what Kayleigh's saying, that Republicans had been asleep at the switch, not with their finger on the pulse of what had been happening in the electorate, and he's awoken that and in that way uniting Republican voters.

HOOVER: Well, listen, I mean for the one point with Eric Cantor, I think that what happened with Eric Cantor's race is very localized. Eric Cantor hadn't been tending the fences at home and that's why he lost. But Kayleigh's right, I think the existence of Trump, who won a

plurality of Republican primary voters, not a minority, does - has not unified the party, still represents a failure on behalf of the Republican Party for not listening and hearing what's going on with its base. And it is a significant portion of the base. It is still a minority. But it's a real thing. I mean nobody expects - I mean here we are, and Donald Trump is our presumptive nominee. We have not, I think, it is attributed to a lack of economic policies that have answered real grievances on behalf of white working class Americans who self-identify as Republicans.

CAMEROTA: Yes, Kayleigh, what about the media, mainstream media, suggesting that the GOP is having an identity crisis because Donald Trump is, by all accounts, an unorthodox candidate and so he's making people question what their platform is, what they really stand for?

MCENANY: He definitely is. But I think that's a good thing because, as Margaret mentioned, the GOP has left white working class voters behind. And it's time for the Republican Party to say, hey, maybe we should question free trade when it doesn't work for middle class voters. Perhaps we should make sure that people have health care in a way that, you know, enhance - that embraces free market principles, but make sure that people have health care. This is something the GOP has failed to do and expanding the platform is a good thing otherwise -

CUOMO: The speaker - the speaker makes a very different case about trade. And he points out, not just statistics, but a lot of this is politics, right? I mean have you lost jobs because of trade? If you want to take an ambitious number, you can say, yes, you've lost about 35,000 jobs, you'll see as a high estimate, which is about one of every seven jobs being created every month, unless you have a down month. The numbers are - it's about the optics and it's about what your party wants to be. The question is, if the speaker of the House and the leadership and a plurality of your people are one way, how does Trump build the tent bigger?

MCENANY: He needs to push leadership to realize that the GOP must expand. We have lost two elections and part of that is because there's a very narrow base of Republicans and the Republican leadership has sent a message, you have to fit a certain litmus test of conservative principles in order to be -

CUOMO: But they're not upset about his principles, they're upset about what comes out of his mouth that they believe alienate voters, right? I mean that's his problem.

HOOVER: But, I mean, Kayleigh, you're talking about expanding the base and expanding the party. And you're exactly right, that's what Donald Trump needs to do. He needs to expand it to Hispanics. He needs to expand it to women. He needs to expand it. And that's what, you know, Speaker Ryan is trying to do. Like they - I mean Speaker Ryan has spent the last two weeks, and is going to spend the next week, rolling out two significant policy papers each week, anti-poverty, trade policies, reforming entitlements, all of these things which, frankly, are a one Republican method for stimulating the economy and, frankly, answering the market failure on the Republican side, answering some of the problems these white working class Americans have with the Republican Party, who hasn't provided them with any solutions. But the way to do it to your point, grow the tent, bring more people in, don't alienate people and push them out.

MCENANY: And I - I agree with you that Trump has gotten off message at times, and that is why it is pivotal that he goes to minority communities, that he goes to millennials and says, here is what I can do for you economically and stays on message and doesn't get off track with issues like what we saw with Judge Curiel. So I agree with you there, and I think that we are going -

HOOVER: He's just not doing that so far. I mean he's just not doing that.

MCENANY: But he is. He is going to.

HOOVER: And his rhetoric has almost precluded his entrance to any new community because when you say, you know, the Mexican judge isn't going to be a fair - I mean all of the offensive things he's said, it's like, these people aren't even going to listen, he's turned them off so much. And so that's why it's quite difficult to understand how he's going to grow the tent.

[08:55:09] CAMEROTA: Margaret, Kayleigh, thank you for both of your perspectives.

MCENANY: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: You have a programming note to tell everyone about.

CUOMO: We do, absolutely, because leadership matters and you're going to have the speaker of the house, Paul Ryan, with Wolf Blitzer exclusively at 5:00 p.m. today, and he's going to lay out what his concerns are going forward and what he believe his party needs to do.

CAMEROTA: That will be very interesting. Tune in to that.

Meanwhile, we have "The Good Stuff" for you, next.

CUOMO: Yay.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: "Good Stuff." One school going above and beyond for disabled kids in their community. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They have these diagnoses, and they have a lot of medical needs, but at the end of the day they're kids and they want to play.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: So, South View Elementary School in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, is planning to help. $260,000 project.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Another kid could just wheel him around and they could go off and play, and I could sit on the side, like the other moms, and watch.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Simple genius. The playground will accommodate kids with special needs, ramps, handgrips, equipment that will allows these kids to spin, maneuver and play on the playground like everybody else. Nobody does this. They're doing it. It's awesome.

[09:00:10] CAMEROTA: That's a life changer.

Thanks so much for that.

Time now for NEWSROOM with Carol Costello.

Hi, Carol.